The cowherd boy, the king, and the lord of time

Read along

Namaste, and welcome back. Let us take one slow breath together before we begin.

In our first sitting we heard how the Shiva Purana tells of four brothers at Avanti, who kept their daily worship even when the asura Dushana brought fear to the city, and how Shiva rose from the earth there as Mahakala. Today we hear the second story that the same part of the Purana tells about Ujjain. Then we will sit with the name Mahakala itself, and see how this city came to have a special place in the way Indian astronomers measured time.

The story begins with a king. The Kotirudra Samhita of the Shiva Purana tells of King Chandrasena of Ujjayini, who was a devoted worshipper of Shiva. The Purana says that Manibhadra, one of Shiva's ganas, his attendants, became the king's friend and gave him a precious jewel called the chintamani. It shone like the sun, and it was said to fulfil wishes.

News of the jewel spread. Other kings wanted it for themselves. The Purana says they gathered their armies and surrounded Ujjayini. King Chandrasena did not go out to meet them in anger. He went into the temple of Mahakala and gave himself fully to worship, day and night.

Now the story turns to a very small figure. Near the temple lived a cowherd woman, a widow, with her young son. The boy, whom the Purana calls Shrikara, came with his mother and watched the king's worship. He saw the care in it, the offerings, the attention. He went home and did not forget.

At home, he found an ordinary stone and set it up as a linga. He brought whatever he could find, leaves and flowers and water, and offered them just as he had seen the king do. He was so absorbed in his worship that when his mother called him for food, he did not come.

His mother came in, tired and upset, and in her annoyance she threw the stone away and scattered his offerings. The boy was heartbroken. He cried and called out to Shiva, and in his grief he fell to the ground and lay there until he fainted.

When he opened his eyes, the Purana says, his small home had changed. In place of the stone stood a shining shrine, and within it a linga made of jewels. His mother saw it and was filled with wonder. The news reached the king, who came to see it, and then it reached the kings camped outside the city. The Purana says they understood that a city where even a cowherd child was so dear to Shiva could not be taken, and they gave up their plan and made peace with Chandrasena.

The Purana adds one more scene. It says that Hanuman came there, praised the boy's devotion before everyone, and said that in the eighth generation of the boy's family a cowherd named Nanda would be born, in whose house Krishna would grow up. Readers of the Purana will recognise the way it ties the stories of Shiva and Krishna together here.

Let us look at what this story is doing. It places a king and a cowherd boy side by side. The king has wealth, a famous temple and a wish-fulfilling jewel. The boy has a stone and his full attention. The Purana does not mock the king. His worship is sincere too, and it is what the boy learns from. What the story gives weight to is the boy's attention. He was so held by what he was doing that he forgot his meal.

And there is something gentle in how the mother is shown. She is not a villain. She is a tired parent with a child who will not come to eat. Many of us will know that scene from our own homes. The story lets her be ordinary, and it lets her share in what follows.

The story also has something to say about how devotion is learned. Shrikara did not receive teaching from a guru or read a text. He watched someone worship with care, and he copied what he saw with his whole heart. Children still learn this way. They watch how the grown-ups around them light the lamp, fold their hands, speak of God. The king never knew that a small boy was learning from him, yet his worship reached further than he could have imagined.

Now let us come to the name Mahakala.

The Sanskrit word kala has more than one meaning. It means time. It also means death, because time is what brings every life to its end. And it can mean black, the dark colour of night. In the name Mahakala, maha means great. So the name holds all of this at once. Mahakala is the great one who is beyond time, and who is not held by death.

In the Puranas, time is not a straight line. It moves in great cycles, the yugas and the larger cycles beyond them, in which worlds arise, last for a long while, and are then drawn back in. Shiva is the one who draws them back at the end of a cycle, so that a new one may begin. That is why he is sometimes called the destroyer, though the tradition understands this destruction as a return and a rest, and as part of the renewal that follows.

To call Shiva Mahakala is to say that the one who stands beyond all this change is present here. For a devotee this is not a frightening thought. People in Ujjain speak of Mahakal with a kind of warm familiarity, as the king of the city, the one who looks after it. The same word that means death is spoken with affection.

There is another side of time in Ujjain, and it is a very practical one.

Long before our modern maps, Indian astronomers needed a fixed line on the earth from which to count their calculations. Astronomical texts in the Siddhanta tradition, such as the Surya Siddhanta, took a line running north to south through Ujjain, which they knew as Avanti, as that reference. In this way Ujjain served Indian astronomers much as Greenwich serves the world today, as a zero line from which longitude and the timing of the sky were counted. Many traditional panchangs were worked out for Ujjain for this reason.

The city also lies close to the Tropic of Cancer, the line where the midsummer sun stands directly overhead. And a strong tradition connects the great astronomer Varahamihira with Ujjain. Scholars still discuss the details of his life, so we hold that as a tradition.

Much later, in the first half of the eighteenth century, the ruler of Amber, Sawai Jai Singh the Second, took a deep interest in astronomy. He built a set of observatories in different cities, at Delhi, Jaipur, Varanasi, Mathura and Ujjain. He built the one at Ujjain while he was serving as governor of the Malwa region. In Ujjain it is often called the Vedh Shala, or the Jantar Mantar.

If you visit, you will see large instruments of stone and masonry standing in the open. The largest is the Samrat Yantra, a great sundial whose shadow tells the local time. There are others, such as the Nadivalaya Yantra, the Digamsha Yantra and the Bhitti Yantra, each made to read a different part of the sky. The observatory was restored in the early twentieth century, and visitors and students still come to watch a shadow move across the stone and tell the hour.

We should be careful not to tie these two things too tightly together. The astronomers had their own practical reasons for choosing Ujjain, and their work was careful and mathematical. The temple tradition of Mahakala has its own roots in the Puranas. Yet it is true that in this one city, people have spent centuries attending to time, some through worship of the lord who is beyond it, and some by watching the sun and stars with great patience. A visitor can hold both with respect.

Let us gather what we heard today.

The Shiva Purana tells of King Chandrasena, whose city was surrounded by kings who wanted his jewel, and of the cowherd boy Shrikara, who worshipped a stone with full attention. The Purana says a shrine of jewels appeared in the boy's home, the kings made peace, and Hanuman foretold that Nanda would be born in the boy's line. The name Mahakala holds both time and death, and speaks of the lord who is beyond them. And Ujjain was for centuries the zero line of Indian astronomy, where Sawai Jai Singh the Second later built an observatory that still stands.

One thing to take with you. Shrikara forgot his meal because he was so absorbed in what he was doing. Tomorrow, choose one ordinary task and give it your full attention for a few minutes, the way that boy did. Notice how time feels when you are fully present to it.

In the next sitting, we go to the temple before dawn, to understand the Bhasma aarti, what it is, what it means, and how to attend it with respect.

Keep going

• Listen: The cowherd boy, the king, and the lord of time
• Previous: The lord who rose from the earth at Avanti
• Next: Ash before dawn, understanding the Bhasma aarti
• हिन्दी में पढ़ें
• All episodes of Ujjain: Mahakal's court